Magician's Gambit

Aunt Pol's own preference for that shape. The two women, Poledra and Beldaran, were involved rather intimately in his own background, he realized, but quite irrationally he resented them. They had shared a part of the lives of his Aunt and his grandfather that he would never - could never know.
    The old man moved a parchment and picked up a peculiar-looking device with a sighting glass in one end of it. "I thought I'd lost you," he told the device, touching it with a familiar fondness. "You've been under that parchment all this time."
    "What is it?" Garion asked him.
    "A thing I made when I was trying to discover the reason for mountains."
    "The reason?"
    "Everything has a reason." Wolf raised the instrument. "You see, what you do is-" He broke off and laid the device back on the table. "It's much too complicated to explain. I'm not even sure if I remember exactly how to use it myself. I haven't touched it since before Belzedar came to the Vale. When he arrived, I had to lay my studies aside to train him." He looked around at the dust and clutter. "This is useless," he said. "The dust will just come back anyway."
    "Were you alone here before Belzedar came?"
    "My Master was here. That's his tower over there." Wolf pointed through the north window at a tall, slender stone structure about a mile away.
    "Was he really here?" Garion asked. "I mean, not just his spirit?"
    "No. He was really here. That was before the Gods departed."
    "Did you live here always?"
    "No. I came like a thief, looking for something to steal - well, that's not actually true, I suppose. I was about your age when I came here, and I was dying at the time."
    "Dying?" Garion was startled.
    "Freezing to death. I'd left the village I was born in the year before after my mother died - and spent my first winter in the camp of the Godless Ones. They were very old by then."
    "Godless Ones?"
    "Ulgos - or rather the ones who decided not to follow Gorim to Prolgu. They stopped having children after that, so they were happy to take me in. I couldn't understand their language at the time, and all their pampering got on my nerves, so I ran away in the spring. I was on my way back the next fall, but I got caught in an early snowstorm not far from here. I lay down against the side of my Master's tower to die - I didn't know it was a tower at first. With all the snow swirling around, it just looked like a pile of rock. As I recall, I was feeling rather sorry for myself at the time."
    "I can imagine." Garion shivered at the thought of being alone and dying.
    "I was sniveling a bit, and the sound disturbed my Master. He let me in - probably more to quiet me than for any other reason. As soon as I got inside, I started looking for things to steal."
    "But he made you a sorcerer instead."
    "No. He made me a servant - a slave. I worked for him for five years before I even found out who he was. Sometimes I think I hated him, but I had to do what he told me to - I didn't really know why. The last straw came when he told me to move a big rock out of his way. I tried with all my strength, but I couldn't budge it. Finally I got angry enough to move it with my mind instead of my back. That's what he'd been waiting for, of course. After that we got along better. He changed my name from Garath to Belgarath, and he made me his pupil."
    "And his disciple?"
    "That took a little longer. I had a lot to learn. I was examining the reason that certain stars fell at the time he first called me his discipleand he was working on a round, gray stone he'd picked up by the riverbank."
    "Did you ever discover the reason - that stars fall, I mean?"
    "Yes. It's not all that complicated. It has to do with balance. The world needs a certain weight to keep it turning. When it starts to slow down, a few nearby stars fall. Their weight makes up the difference."
    "I never thought of that."
    "Neither did I - not for quite some time."
    "The stone you mentioned. Was it-"
    "The Orb," Wolf confirmed. "Just an ordinary rock until my Master touched it. Anyway, I learned the secret of the Will and the Word which isn't really that much of a secret, after all. It's there in all of us or did I say that before?"
    "1 think so."
    "Probably so. I tend to repeat myself." The old man picked up a roll of parchment and glanced at it, then laid it aside again. "So much that I started and haven't finished." He sighed.
    "Grandfather?"
    "Yes, Garion?"
    "This - thing of ours - how much can you actually do with it?"
    "That